Data engineer interview preparation, round by round
Data engineer interviews usually test SQL first, then data modelling, pipeline design with tools like Spark and Airflow, and a few DSA problems. One project you can explain end to end helps in every round.
23 resources · 18 free · plus 23 for every role · Links checked 15 October 2026 · How we pick
Change role
- Software engineer 54 resources
- Backend developer 45 resources
- Frontend developer 37 resources
- Full stack developer 43 resources
- Mobile developer 19 resources
- DevOps and SRE 24 resources
- Data engineer 23 resources
- Data analyst 21 resources
- Data scientist 24 resources
- ML engineer 31 resources
- AI engineer 27 resources
- QA and SDET 12 resources
Start here
Three resources, in this order. Everything below is for going deeper on one round.
- Data Engineer Handbook
GitHub repo · Free
Use its roadmap to list what your target data engineering role needs before you start practising.
- LeetCode SQL 50 study plan
Practice site · Free
SQL is the first round in most data engineering interviews. Finish all 50 before you try harder window-function questions.
- Data Engineering Zoomcamp
Course · Free
Build one full pipeline here, from ingestion to warehouse, so you have a real project for the design and project rounds.
Nothing matches these filters. Use Show all to see every resource again.
SQL 10 resources
Writing queries with joins, grouping and window functions on realistic tables
Data Engineer Handbook
GitHub repo · DataExpert-io/data-engineer-handbook
A curated hub for learning data engineering, with a roadmap, free bootcamp material, books, communities, projects and short guides to SQL, modelling and architecture rounds.
Best for mapping what to study for data engineering interviews
Also in Data modelling, pipelines, Spark and Airflow, System design
LeetCode SQL 50 study plan
Practice site · leetcode.com
Fifty judged SQL problems in seven groups, from selects and joins to aggregates, subqueries and string functions, mostly easy, as a first structured pass.
Best for a first structured set of SQL interview problems for any data or backend role
SQLBolt
Website · sqlbolt.com
Bite-sized interactive SQL lessons with in-browser exercises, from SELECT and filtering through joins, aggregates and changing tables.
Best for complete beginners who need SQL basics before interview problem sets
Start Data Engineering
Blog · startdataengineering.com
Joseph Machado's hands-on blog on pipeline design, data modelling, Spark, dbt, Airflow and Python, including a multi-part series on data engineering interviews.
Best for understanding how data engineering interviews differ from software engineering ones
Also in Data modelling, pipelines, Spark and Airflow, System design, Coding and DSA
Use The Index, Luke
Book · use-the-index-luke.com
Markus Winand's free online book on how B-tree indexes behave and how to write queries that use them, with notes for Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQL Server.
Best for 'why is this query slow?' and 'how would you index this?' questions
Also in Core CS
Ankit Bansal: Complex SQL Questions for Interview Preparation
Video · youtube.com
A 96-video playlist that works through tricky company-style SQL problems step by step, often solving each one several ways with CTEs, self-joins and window functions.
Best for Indian data analyst and data engineer candidates preparing for the SQL coding round
DataLemur
Practice site · datalemur.com
Company-tagged SQL problems on realistic product-analytics tables, plus probability, statistics, ML and Python questions and a free SQL tutorial.
Best for analyst and data science candidates practising the business-style SQL that big-tech screens use
Also in Data modelling, pipelines, Spark and Airflow
LeetCode
Practice site · leetcode.com
The default site for interview-style coding practice: thousands of problems, free study plans such as Top Interview 150 and SQL 50, and weekly contests.
Best for daily practice and timed contests (Premium mainly adds company-tagged lists)
Also in Coding and DSA
StrataScratch
Practice site · stratascratch.com
A large bank of SQL, Python, statistics and ML questions reported from real data interviews, filterable by company, with dialect choice and community solutions.
Best for volume and company-specific SQL and pandas practice once your SQL basics are solid
Also in Data modelling, pipelines, Spark and Airflow
PostgreSQL Exercises
Practice site · pgexercises.com
Learn-by-doing exercises on one sample database in real PostgreSQL, covering joins, subqueries, aggregates, window functions, dates, strings and recursive queries.
Best for backend developers who want realistic Postgres practice beyond single-table toy problems
Data modelling, pipelines, Spark and Airflow 4 resources
Questions on your stack: languages, frameworks, cloud, testing and data tools
Data Engineering Zoomcamp
Course · DataTalksClub/data-engineering-zoomcamp
A free nine-week, project-based course on containers, infrastructure as code, orchestration, warehousing, analytics engineering, Spark batch jobs and Kafka streaming.
Best for building a complete pipeline project you can walk an interviewer through
AWS Well-Architected Framework
Official guide · docs.aws.amazon.com
AWS's official design guidance for cloud workloads, built on six pillars from operational excellence and security to cost optimisation and sustainability.
Best for 'design this on AWS' or 'how would you make it more reliable or cheaper?' questions
Also in System design
Kimball dimensional modeling techniques
Official guide · kimballgroup.com
The Kimball Group's reference list of dimensional-modelling techniques: grain, fact table types, conformed and role-playing dimensions, and slowly changing dimensions.
Best for data modelling rounds on star schemas, SCD Type 2 and fact versus dimension design
Also in System design
Darshil Parmar (YouTube)
YouTube channel · youtube.com
An Indian data engineer's channel of end-to-end project builds on AWS, Spark, Airflow, Databricks and Iceberg, plus data-modelling walkthroughs and job-hunt advice.
Best for freshers and career switchers in India who want portfolio projects and a realistic path
System design 5 resources
Designing a large service: APIs, data, scaling and the trade-offs between options
Amazon - How We Hire (role-specific interview prep)
Official guide · amazon.jobs
Amazon's hiring hub, explaining each stage from application to the final loop, with role-specific prep pages for SDE, front-end, BI engineer and scientist roles.
Best for finding out what Amazon tests for your role and level, and how its loop works
Also in Coding and DSA
Awesome Engineering Articles (AlgoMaster)
GitHub repo · ashishps1/awesome-engineering-articles
Roughly 340 hand-picked engineering-blog posts tabulated by company, topic and year, including Indian firms such as Flipkart, Razorpay, Swiggy and Zomato.
Best for reading how the company you are interviewing with, or a close peer, built its systems
Designing Data-Intensive Applications, 2nd Edition
Book · martin.kleppmann.com
The standard deep dive on storage engines, replication, partitioning, transactions, consistency and stream processing, updated in a 2026 second edition with Chris Riccomini.
Best for real depth for senior backend and data-engineering design rounds (read selected chapters)
Also in Core CS
Distributed Systems lecture series (Martin Kleppmann, Cambridge)
Course · youtube.com
A compact Cambridge lecture series with free notes covering RPC, clocks, broadcast, replication, quorums, Raft, two-phase commit and consistency models.
Best for a shorter, more watchable alternative to MIT 6.5840 on consistency and consensus
MIT 6.5840: Distributed Systems
Course · pdos.csail.mit.edu
MIT's graduate distributed-systems course with free lecture notes, paper readings and Go labs where you build MapReduce, Raft and a fault-tolerant sharded key-value store.
Best for engineers aiming at infrastructure or staff roles who want first-principles depth on consensus
Coding and DSA 3 resources
Solving problems with data structures and algorithms, and explaining your approach
Grind 75
Website · techinterviewhandbook.org
A study-plan generator that turns a ranked list of high-frequency LeetCode problems into a week-by-week schedule sized to the hours you have.
Best for candidates with a fixed number of weeks who want the highest-value problem list
NeetCode Roadmap (NeetCode 150)
Website · neetcode.io
A visual topic map of 150 core LeetCode problems, each linked to a free video walkthrough on the NeetCode YouTube channel.
Best for learning problem patterns topic by topic, with a video solution for every problem
HackerRank Interview Preparation Kit
Practice site · hackerrank.com
A short set of hand-picked problems on HackerRank's own editor, grouped by topic, to warm up for interviews held on that platform.
Best for getting used to HackerRank's editor and input format before a coding round hosted there
Core CS 1 resource
Operating systems, DBMS, computer networks and OOP basics
GeeksforGeeks CS Subjects Interview Questions
Website · geeksforgeeks.org
A hub linking question banks for OOP, operating systems, DBMS, computer networks and software engineering, organised around what Indian companies ask.
Best for last-week revision of OS, DBMS, networks and OOP theory for campus and fresher interviews
Same for every role
Behavioral rounds, resumes, pay and company guides do not change with the job. These 23 live on the interview resources hub.
Behavioral and HR
- GeeksforGeeks - HR interview questions
- Microsoft Careers - Interview tips
- MIT CAPD - The STAR method for behavioral interviews
- Tech Interview Handbook - Behavioral interviews
- reverse-interview
- Amazon Leadership Principles
- Google Careers - Interview tips
- Jeff H Sipe - Practice Interviews (YouTube)
- A Life Engineered (Steve Huynh, YouTube)
Practice and communities
Resume, companies and offers
- Tech Interview Handbook - Software engineer resume guide
- Reactive Resume
- Jake's Resume (LaTeX template on Overleaf)
- Hiring Without Whiteboards
- r/developersIndia Community Wiki
- AmbitionBox
- Anthropic - Candidate AI guidance
- Haseeb Qureshi - Ten rules for negotiating a job offer
- Thoughtworks India - AI policy for recruitment
- Levels.fyi - Software engineer pay in India
- r/EngineeringResumes wiki
From the team that keeps this list
Helpwing is a desktop app for interviews where AI help is allowed: it hears the question and drafts an answer from your resume. It is not for online assessments or tests.